Review – Reality Fighters

Taken as a tech demo – an example of what PS Vita can do with augmented reality, 3D photography and face-recognition technology – Reality Fighters is interesting. Good, even, in some places.

But then we remember it has a game slapped onto it, and we get sad. Make no mistake: Reality Fighters is a reasonably impressive technical showpiece first and foremost. The game, which is unfortunately the main draw and the main reason to buy the thing, is an afterthought. And a pretty poor one at that.

Street Fighter X Tekken, Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat and others are making their way to Vita. And yet Reality Fighters still thinks it can maintain this façade of being a passable fighting game. Don’t get us wrong – it’s playable at the most fundamental level, fast enough to… umm… not be slow and generally responsive. Though collision detection can’t make its mind up whether to actually work or not. Then there’s the fact it’s devastatingly simple, boring and as shallow as a puddle that doesn’t actually exist.

For all the cooing and laughter Reality Fighters raised with its pasting of our faces onto characters, with its making thin men into fat women (oh! the hilarity), with its augmented-reality backgrounds allowing us to fight anywhere, it all falls flat thanks to a fighting engine teetering on the brink of being downright bad.

52%

Review by Ian Dransfield